Amid controversies, Facebook trumpets massive new supercomputer

Facebook's parent company Meta announced on Monday it was launching one of the world's most powerful supercomputers to boost its capacity to process data, despite persistent disputes over privacy and disinformation.

The US tech giant said the array of machines could process images and video up to 20 times faster than their current systems.

The supercomputer, built from thousands of processors, will be used to "seamlessly analyze text, images, and video together; develop new augmented reality tools; and much more", the firm said in blog post written by two of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers.

They envisage developing AI tools that will, among other things, allow people speaking in several different languages to understand each other in real-time.

Meta said the machine, known as AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), was already in the top five fastest supercomputers and would become the fastest AI machine in the world when fully built in the next few months.

Platforms such as Facebook and Google have long been criticized for the way they process and utilise the data they take from their users.

The two firms currently face legal cases across the European Union that allege data transfers from the bloc to the United States are illegal.

And the AI algorithms that funnel Facebook users towards appealing posts have been criticized for helping to fuel disinformation and hate speech.

- 'Metaverse' hopes -

Facebook has apologised repeatedly about the adverse effects of its algorithms and has long flagged its investment in content moderators and other measures to tackle problematic posts.

The blog on Monday stressed that weeding out harmful content was among the "critical use cases" for its AI development.

The researchers wrote that high-definition video was creating ever greater demand for processing power at the same time as the company was pushing for AI tools based on trillions of examples.

"We hope RSC will help us build entirely new AI systems that can, for example, power real-time voice translations to large groups of people, each speaking a different language, so they can seamlessly collaborate on a research project or play an AR game together," wrote the researchers.

"Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for the next major computing platform -- the metaverse, where AI-driven applications and products will play an important role."

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing harder than his big tech rivals to develop the idea of the metaverse, which envisages an immersive 3D internet enabled by virtual reality headsets and sensor equipment.

Facebook has not yet confirmed the location of its supercomputer, telling AFP the information was confidential.

Agence France-Presse

Zuckerberg says regulation inevitable. Is Congress up to it?

WASHINGTON — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday that regulation of social media companies is “inevitable” and disclosed that his own personal information has been compromised by malicious outsiders. But after two days of congressional testimony, what seemed clear was how little Congress seems to know about Facebook, much less what to do about it.

House lawmakers aggressively questioned Zuckerberg Wednesday on user data, privacy settings and whether the company is biased against conservatives. As they did in the Senate a day earlier, both Republicans and Democrats suggested that regulation might be needed, but there was no consensus and few specifics about what that might look like — or even what the biggest problems are.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the panel and a 30-year veteran of the House, said at the beginning of the hearing that he plans to work on legislation but is pessimistic that Congress will pass anything.

“I’ve just seen it over and over again — that we have the hearings, and nothing happens,” he said.

For Zuckerberg, who often found himself explaining what his company does in rudimentary terms to lawmakers twice his age, the hearings could be considered a win: Facebook shares rose more than 1 percent after climbing 4.5 percent on Monday. And his company regained more than $25 billion in market value that is had lost since it was revealed in March that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Still, Facebook’s stock remains 10 percent below where it stood before the scandal, a decline that has wiped out about $50 billion in shareholder wealth.

Zuckerberg agreed to the hearings as pressure mounted over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the company’s own admission last year that it had been compromised by Russians trying to influence the 2016 election. Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through a social media propaganda effort that included online ad purchases using U.S. aliases and politicking on U.S. soil. A number of the Russian ads were on Facebook.

Zuckerberg told the Senate on Tuesday that the company has been working with Mueller in his Russia probe and apologized over and over again for the company’s handling of data privacy.

“I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” he said.

House lawmakers were a bit tougher on Zuckerberg than their colleagues in the Senate, many of whom seemed confused by the company and what it does. Some of the House members curtly cut him off in questioning, trying to make the most of their four minutes each.

Zuckerberg mostly held his composure, repeating many of the same well-rehearsed answers: He is sorry for the company’s mistakes. He is working on artificial intelligence technology to weed out hate speech and at the same time ensure that they don’t block people for the wrong reasons. People own their own data, as far as he sees it. And he’s come a long way since he created the platform in his dorm room almost 15 years ago.

Some of the lawmakers talked to Zuckerberg, 33, as they would their children or grandchildren, and were occasionally befuddled by the complexities of his company.

Wrapping up his four minutes, Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., commended the platform, saying “it’s wonderful for us seniors to connect with our relatives.”

By the close of Wednesday’s hearing, Zuckerberg had spent roughly 10 out of the previous 24 hours testifying before Congress.

On regulation, Zuckerberg said he was open to it.

“The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation,” he said.

Still, he said, lawmakers need to be careful, noting that new rules or laws could hurt smaller businesses more than a behemoth like Facebook.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden said the committee will look at what could be done.

“While Facebook has certainly grown, I worry it has not matured,” Walden, R-Ore.,  told Zuckerberg. “I think it is time to ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast and broken too many things.”

Many questions focused on Cambridge Analytica, which gathered data several years ago through a personality quiz created by an academic researcher. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also — thanks to Facebook’s loose restrictions — data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn’t intended to share publicly. Cambridge Analytica then obtained the data and was said to have used it to try to influence elections around the world.

Zuckerberg said at the House hearing that his own Facebook data was part of that sweep. He told the Senate that Facebook had been led to believe Cambridge Analytica had deleted the user data it had harvested and that had been “clearly a mistake.” He assured senators the company would have handled the situation differently today.

That may be enough to satisfy lawmakers for now. But that could change if Democrats take control of Congress in midterm elections this year.

Pallone said that if Democrats were in charge, “then we would push all the more.”   /muf

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook to prioritize delivering local news to users worldwide

After it first rolled out to US users back in January, Facebook will now expand its goal to prioritize the inclusion of local news in its News Feed worldwide.

The change will take effect to help local publishers reach audiences in their respective cities, the social media site announced in a blog post yesterday.

Facebook explained that a publisher will be identified as local to multiple cities “if the people in those cities are more likely than the people outside of those cities to read articles from the publisher’s domain.”

It added: “By expanding the scope of what may be considered local to people, we’re including other cities that people may care about and connecting people to local publishers from those cities.”

The social media site also promised to prioritize “high quality” in News Feed that includes “news from sources that are broadly trusted, informative and relevant to local communities.”

“Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post back in January, when the update was first introduced to US users.  /ra

source: technology.inquirer.net

Oculus unveils standalone virtual reality headset

SAN JOSE, United States - Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled a new Oculus virtual reality headset untethered from computers as part of a vision to bring the new technology to the masses.

Oculus Go headsets will be priced at $199 when they begin shipping early next year, Zuckerberg said during a keynote presentation at an annual developers conference in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.

Zuckerberg touted Oculus Go as the first product in a "sweet spot" between smartphones and powerful desktop computers.

"It's an all-new, standalone headset that doesn't require you to snap in a phone or plug in a cable," Zuckerberg said.

Oculus Go uses internal cameras, sensors and software to track movements that are translated into corresponding motion in virtual worlds rendered in headsets.

Facebook stressed its commitment to virtual reality, despite less than stellar adoption of headsets such as Oculus Rift which need to be plugged into computers.

"We want to get a billion people in virtual reality," Zuckerberg said.

"The road ahead won't be easy, but virtual reality will change the way we see the world and will make all of our lives a whole lot better."

Sony, HTC and Facebook-owned Oculus are the top players in virtual reality head gear, each striving to stake out territory in the budding market.

While Sony's VR headsets work with PS 4 consoles, competing gear requires computers that can handle the demand of processing rich, immersive graphics in real time. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Ohio family surprised when Mark Zuckerberg comes to dinner

NEWTON FALLS, Ohio — An Ohio family says they learned just 20 minutes before dinner this week that a planned mystery guest would be Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

The Vindicator of Youngstown reports Zuckerberg dined Friday with the Moore family in Newton Falls, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) southeast of Cleveland. The newspaper reports Zuckerberg had asked his staff to find Democrats who voted for President Donald Trump.

Not all the dinner chat was political. Daniel Moore says he and his wife, Lisa, talked about their work with an orphanage in Uganda and that Zuckerberg says he’s now planning a fundraiser to benefit the orphans.

Zuckerberg’s project, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, says he visited Youngstown’s Eastern Gateway Community College Friday and met with people recovering from opioid addiction in Dayton Saturday. He has challenged himself to visit people in all 50 states. CBB/rga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Zuckerberg writes Facebook ‘manifesto’

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday offered a vision for the social network as a force in building a “global community,” as more people become disillusioned with troubled political institutions.

In a wide-ranging post of nearly 6,000 words, Zuckerberg said Facebook can play a role in bringing people together as they face fractious politics and anti-globalization sentiment.

The essay — released without warning and instantly called a “manifesto” by pundits — offered a detailed, idealistic vision of the role of the world’s biggest social network, going well beyond Zuckerberg’s frequent comments on “connecting the world.”

“In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us,” he wrote.

The post on his Facebook page, titled “Building Global Community,” said the social network with some 1.8 billion members should play a role in improving people’s lives.

“Today I want to focus on the most important question of all: are we building the world we all want?” he said.

“Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building a global community. When we began, this idea was not controversial… Yet now, across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection.”

Zuckerberg said people around the world face threats that are becoming “increasingly global,” like terrorism, natural disasters, disease, refugee crises, and climate change, which “need coordinated responses from a worldwide vantage point.”

He added that non-government organizations have done little to address these problems on a global scale and said that he has “directed Facebook to invest more and more resources into serving this need.”

“My hope is that more of us will commit our energy to building the long term social infrastructure to bring humanity together,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“The answers to these questions won’t all come from Facebook, but I believe we can play a role.”

Zuckerberg, who in recent months has been taking a more active role in civic affairs, announced in 2015 that he and his wife Priscilla Chan would donate 99 percent of their Facebook wealth — an estimated $45 billion — to philanthropic causes.

Last year, the Chan-Zuckerberg initiative pledged to donate $3 billion over the next decade to research efforts to help banish or manage all disease. CBB

source: technology.inquirer.net

Mark Zuckerberg funds scientists, experiments to cure all diseases

There’s no question that tech mogul and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is one generous man.

After amassing massive amounts of wealth through his social network innovation, the 32-year-old billionaire shared his overly ambitious—and seemingly impossible—plan to one day treat and cure all diseases known to man.

Zuckerberg’s initiative seems to have taken a step further on Thursday, as reports surfaced that he has shelled out a substantial amount to dozens of scientists over the next five years, to turn his vision into reality.

Along with the aid of his wife Priscilla Chan, the couple’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) launched a $3 billion cheque book, in an aim “cure all disease by the end of the twenty-first century.”


According to Business Insider,  the generous stipend will be used in long-term scientific research that wouldn’t necessarily pay off straight away.

Apart from the initial donation, the CZI subgroup Chan Zuckerberg Biohub also announced an additional $50 million in funding to selected researchers.

Out of the 700 researchers who applied for the funding, 47 scientists will receive approximately $1.5 million each to carry out the necessary experiments for the next five years.

Among the primary objectives include the imaging cells, developing biochip technologies and studying the transmission of malaria, through the help of three universities—Berkley, University of Central Florida and Stanford.

“Our three university partners provide the very backbone of Biohub’s work,” the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub said in a release.

“Our investigators come from these outstanding research institutions, and their faculty will be an integral part of our day-to-day operations here at Biohub.”

The medical research organization also assured everyone that the fund will not go to waste and be given to the most qualified researchers.

“We are conducting research that helps solve big health problems. We find and support the best and brightest biologists, scientists, engineers and technologists,” the group said.

“Our culture emphasizes intellectual freedom and collaboration. We provide our team with the best scientific tools—and when the right tools don’t exist, we will invent them.”

Biohub co-president Joseph DeRisi, meanwhile, praised the Zuckerberg couple’s hands-on approach towards finding a cure to mankind’s most dreaded illnesses.

“Both Mark and Priscilla are avid consumers of science,” he was quoted as saying in the report. “They enjoy learning new things and knowing what the cutting edge of research is all about.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

Bill Gates could reach ‘trillionaire’ status by 2042

As the world’s richest man, Bill Gates exponentially grows his net worth each passing day, and according to a recent study, he’ll most likely become the first ever trillionaire in the next 25 years.

As pointed out in an Oxfam International report entitled “An Economy for the 99%”, the Microsoft founder’s wealth has grown at a staggering 11 percent clip per year since 2009, and has shown no signs of slowing down.

With his net worth at $78.7 billion, as modestly estimated by Forbes as of August 2016, the 61-year-old tech wizard is projected to reach the unimaginable trillionaire status by the time he is 86 years old.

By the time he left Microsoft in 2006, Gates’ net worth was at $50 billion and has grown at an astonishing rate over the last decade.

His meteoric rise money-wise comes  “despite his commendable attempts to give it away through his Foundation,” the report said.

In addition to the charitable work he does through his personal foundation, the tech innovator has also devoted his time and resources to eradicating infectious diseases and improving education around the world.

A recent estimate says he has donated over $28 billion through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In addition, Gates is a founding member of The Giving Pledge, a group composed of some of the richest individuals in the world who pledge to give away more than half of their worth.

What’s even more absurd is the fact that since no one has reached such status yet, the word ‘trillionaire’ is not even recognized in the dictionary as an official word.

“In such an environment, if you are already rich, you have to try hard not to keep getting a lot richer,” Oxfam noted in a Business Insider report.

“The super-rich can achieve returns that are not available to the ordinary saver, helping the gap to grow between the wealthy and everyone else,” the report stated. “The bigger the initial investment, the higher returns one can make as the initial costs of sophisticated advice and high-risk investments can be justified with the potential for super-lucrative returns.”

In a separate report last week, Oxfam revealed names of eight billionaires—including Gates—who have more money than the poorest half of the world’s population.

The list includes business magnate Warren Buffett, Inditex founder Amancio Ortega, Mexican investor Carlos Slim, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Khristian Ibarrola

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

8 men own half the world’s wealth — Oxfam

LONDON, United Kingdom — Eight men own the same wealth as half the world’s population, a level of inequality which “threatens to pull our societies apart”, Oxfam said on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum opening in Davos.

The wealth of the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people is the equivalent to the combined net worth of six American businessmen, one from Spain and another from Mexico.

Picked from Forbes’ billionaires list, they include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg who co-founded Facebook, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.


Oxfam pointed to a link between the vast gap between rich and poor and growing discontent with mainstream politics around the world.

“From Brexit to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a worrying rise in racism and the widespread disillusionment with mainstream politics, there are increasing signs that more and more people in rich countries are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo,” Oxfam said in its new report, “An economy for the 99 percent”.

The charity said new data on wealth distribution from countries such as India and China had prompted it to revise its own calculation, having said a year ago the wealth of half the world’s population was in the hands of 62 people.

Inequality will be among the issues topping the agenda as the world’s political and business elite meet in Davos from Tuesday until Friday, when 3,000 people will gather for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“Responsive and responsible leadership” has been chosen as the theme of the summit, which organisers said was a response to a “backlash against globalization leading to two surprising vote results and a rise in populism in the West”.

In its report Oxfam called for an increase in tax rates targeting “rich individuals and cooperations”, as well as a global agreement to end competition between countries to lower corporate tax rates.

The charity also decried lobbying by corporations and the closeness of business and politics, calling for mandatory public lobby registries and stronger rules on conflicts of interest. CBB

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Zuckerberg fund pledges $3 billion to banish disease

SAN FRANCISCO, United States – Mark Zuckerberg and his wife on Wednesday pledged $3 billion over the next decade to help banish or manage all disease, pouring some of the Facebook founder’s fortune into innovative research.

“This is a big goal,” Zuckerberg said at a San Francisco event announcing the effort of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative established by the couple.

“But we spent the last few years speaking with experts who think it is possible, so we dug in.”

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had their daughter Max late last year. Shortly after, they pledged to donate 99 percent of their Facebook holdings or some $45 billion to “advance human potential and promote equality.”

At Wednesday’s event, Zuckerberg said their goal is to cure all disease, or at least turn catastrophic illnesses from terminal to manageable or preventable within their daughter’s lifetime.

While the funding effort is for the next decade, Zuckerberg and his wife said they hope to achieve their objective of by the end of this century.

Chan, fighting back tears at times, said that curing all disease within Max’s lifetime will not mean children won’t ever get sick, but it would happen less often and be less severe.

New tools for researchers
The first investment being made as part of what the Zuckerbergs hoped would become a “collective” effort will be $600 million for the creation of a Biohub in San Francisco where researchers, scientists and others will work to build tools to better study and understand diseases.

“Throughout the history of science, most breakthroughs have been preceded by the invention of some new technology that lets you see things in new ways,” Zuckerberg said, mentioning the microscope and DNA sequencing as examples.

“Tools also create breakthroughs in how we treat diseases.”

The Biohub will bring together engineers and scientists from three prestigious California universities to help the effort.

“We plan to invest billions of dollars over decades,” Zuckerberg said.

“But, it will take years for these tools to be built and longer to put them into full use. This is hard and we need to be patient, but it’s important.”

Renowned neuroscientist Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was brought on to lead the project.

Zuckerberg took an engineering approach to the challenge, reasoning that there were a handful of big health culprits including cancer and neurological disease so it was “pretty easy” to imagine what types of tools are needed.

He spoke of the potential to put artificial intelligence to work imaging brains or having machine learning tackling analysis of genomes.

Zuckerberg and Chan also hoped that their project would power a movement to fund more medical research around the world.

Taking part in the event on Wednesday was Microsoft billionaire turned global philanthropist Bill Gates, who has made improving health around the world a top goal at the foundation he created with his wife.

Gates praised Zuckerberg and Chan for taking on a “very bold, very ambitious” challenge.

“I have no doubt they will make progress,” Gates said.

“Mark and Priscilla, they are inspiring a whole new generation of philanthropists who will do amazing things.”

Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, stood by her husband as she assured the gathering, which included prominent medical researchers and local politicians, that her “heart is full of hope” and that all involved were eager to get started.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook backs off censoring ‘napalm girl’ photo

SAN FRANCISCO, United States – Facebook backtracked Friday on a decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after its block on the historic image sparked outrage.

The online giant stopped short of apologizing, saying the image had been flagged for violating standards regarding inappropriate posts at the world’s leading social network.

“An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography,” Facebook said in a statement.

“In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.”

Taken by photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh for the Associated Press, the 1972 picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack is considered one of the war’s defining images. It was honored with the Pulitzer Prize.

An active social media user, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg defied Facebook early Friday by posting the photograph, helping to bring the weekslong controversy to a head.

Her post was taken down several hours later, deleted by Facebook, she said.

After Facebook reversed position on the image, Solberg told the BBC she was a “happy prime minister.”

“It shows that using social media can make (a) political change even in social media.”

Editing history

Solberg refused to back down, re-posting the photo on her Facebook page, along with several other iconic pictures with sections blacked out, in an attempt to illustrate the absurdity of censoring historic images.

“What Facebook is doing by deleting photos like this, as good as their intentions are, is to edit our common history,” she wrote in a post.

Solberg had shared the picture at Facebook in the name of freedom of expression amid a brewing debate in Norway.

The row began several weeks ago after Norwegian author Tom Egeland published a post about war photos, illustrated by the picture. Facebook promptly deleted it.

Egeland expressed delight in a Twitter message written in Norwegian after the Facebook about-face.

“Now I’m happy!” the tweet read in part.

“To all who said ‘there’s no point,’ yes there is a point.”

Norwegians had risen to his defense by publishing the photo, posts that Facebook also deleted in line with its rules barring nudity.

The affair took on such proportions that the Norwegian Press Federation asked the country’s powerful pension fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, to examine whether the censorship practice was in line with its ethical criteria for investments.

At the end of 2015, the fund owned 0.52 percent of Facebook.

Traditional media also voiced concern about the moves by Facebook, which has become a key source of news and information for hundreds of millions of people.

On Friday, Norway’s biggest daily Aftenposten dedicated the front page of its print edition to the photo, and published a two-page open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Tweaking the process

Facebook said it reversed course after the outcry from its members and that is was examining how its standards were applied in the situation.

“Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal,” California-based Facebook said of the decision to reinstate posts of the image.

Facebook said it was also modifying its review mechanisms to prevent the image from being removed in future, but that process could take some time.

“The photo should be avai lable for sharing in the coming days,” Facebook said.

“We will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward.”

This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of a lack of sensitivity in how it enforces its rules on appropriate content. The company has in the past blocked seminal artworks because they featured nudity.

Facebook is due to go on trial in France, where a schoolteacher accused it of censorship for blocking his account after he posted a photo of a painting by 19th-century master Gustave Courbet called “L’Origine du monde” (The Origin of the World) that depicts a woman’s vagina.

And earlier this year, a Danish lawmaker also complained that Facebook had removed her picture of the Copenhagen statue of the Little Mermaid because of its nudity rules.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) depicted Facebook’s censorship of the Vietnam War photo as a grave violation of freedom of information.

“The ‘decency’ rules used by this social network are so restrictive that they trample on the freedom to inform,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

“We call on Facebook to add respect for the journalistic values of photos to these rules, and to ensure that their rules are never more severe than national legislations.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

Offline: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg chats with Pope Francis

The Pope didn’t need to log in to his Facebook account.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, together with his wife, Priscilla Chan, met with Pope Francis in his home in Vatican City.

“It was a meeting we’ll never forget. You can feel his warmth and kindness, and how deeply he cares about helping people,” Zuckerberg told his followers on Facebook.

“We told him how much we admire his message of mercy and tenderness, and how he’s found new ways to communicate with people of every faith around the world,” he said.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke says one topic of discussion at Monday’s meeting was “how to use communication technologies to alleviate poverty, encourage a culture of encounter, and make a message of hope arrive, especially to those most in need.”

Francis received a drone model from the “honored” couple, and was told of the couple’s works at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which was launched in December 2015.

Aquila, a solar-powered aircraft that will beam internet connectivity to places with no internet connection, is part of Facebook’s efforts to bridge the digital divide.

“We also discussed the importance of connecting people, especially in parts of the world without internet access,” he said.

The social networking giant runs Free Basics, a platform for delivering basic information and services to developing economies like the Philippines.

The meeting with the pontiff was part of Zuckerberg and Chan’s tour of the quake-struck Italy.

The atmosphere appeared informal, with the chat taking place in the Santa Marta residence, the guest house in Vatican City where the Pope lives.

Zuckerberg ditched his regular gray shirt and suited up for the occasion.

The couple also met with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and appeared in a Q&A session in Rome, which was streamed on Facebook Live. With a report from the Associated Press

source: technology.inquirer.net

New Facebook Live feature allows 2-person remote broadcasts

Facebook has made a pre-announcement of its upcoming updates for Facebook Live at VidCon. Most notable is the ability to stream a broadcast of two people in different locations.

The upcoming feature will essentially allow users to invite a friend to “drop in” on an ongoing broadcast. For live streamers, it can be used to conduct remote interviews and the like. Musicians can also perform duets live without needing to be in the same place.

According to Tech Crunch’s report, the feature will go live this summer.

YouTube will also be implementing other features such as waiting rooms, pre-scheduled broadcasts and going live with a digital mask, as well as special effects. Alfred Bayle

source: technology.inquirer.net

WATCH: Zuckerberg streams live chat with men in space

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg took the leading social network on a new journey Wednesday, with a live-streamed chat with astronauts on the International Space Station.

In a Facebook Live video broadcast shown at the NASA page of the social network, Zuckerberg praised the work going on at the station and launched a few questions, some submitted to him online.

Zuckerberg effused that while Facebook’s mission has long been to connect everyone in the world, “connecting folks who are out in space is about as extreme and cool as it gets.”

The conversation between earthbound Zuckerberg and three members of the ISS crew lasted approximately 20 minutes and ranged from types of experiments being done in space to what food tastes like to them and what they do for fun.

Experiments included effects of zero gravity on combustion, fluids, and even the human body.

Learning how to keep people and the station in top shape in space is an important step toward being able to further explore the cosmos, according to astronauts.

Insights shared included that being in space seemed to mess with the sense of taste, prompting astronauts at the station to spice up food, of which there is a variety.

ISS commander Timothy Kopra noted that treats sold in markets as astronaut ice cream are not that at all, but mentioned a Space X capsule some time back did drop off some real ice cream that was nearly gone.

When asked about Facebook in space, Kopra said that he has enjoyed sharing pictures and musings at the social network.

For fun, astronauts said, they stare out the window a lot and marvel at the beauty of Earth, and play with zero gravity. The trio somersaulted in unison to make the point.

“It would not have been a first Live to outer space without some astronauts flipping around in zero gravity,” Zuckerberg quipped.

“It is amazing this thing worked.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

After conservative meet, Zuckerberg says Facebook open to ‘all ideas’

SAN FRANCISCO—Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that conservatives are an important part of the social network after a meeting aimed at defusing concerns it is politically biased.

“We’ve built Facebook to be a platform for all ideas,” Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page after a meeting at the company’s California headquarters to discuss allegations in a news article that Facebook was suppressing conservative voices in its “trending” news stories.

“Our community’s success depends on everyone feeling comfortable sharing anything they want. It doesn’t make sense for our mission or our business to suppress political content or prevent anyone from seeing what matters most to them.”

Zuckerberg called the meeting after technology news outlet Gizmodo last week reported allegations that Facebook was deliberately omitting articles with conservative viewpoints from a sidebar that lists popular stories.

Facebook has denied the allegations, reportedly made by a former employee, while promising to investigate.

“The reality is, conservatives and Republicans have always been an important part of Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote after Wednesday’s meeting.

“Donald Trump has more fans on Facebook than any other presidential candidate. And Fox News drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world. It’s not even close.”

He added that he recognizes that “many conservatives don’t trust that our platform surfaces content without a political bias” and noted that “I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust. I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products.”

The meeting was scheduled to include political commentator Glenn Beck and talk show host Dana Perino.

Others invited included Zac Moffatt, a political consultant who worked for former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney; Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute; and Barry Bennett, an advisor to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Trump.

CNN conservative commentator S.E. Cupp, another attendee, tweeted after the gathering, “Very productive meeting at @Facebook with Mark and team. Strong commitments to address issues, as well as to work together on common goals.”

Zuckerberg’s post elicited more than 17,000 “likes” shortly after the message appeared but some questioned the allegations.

“Frankly, I do not know where they got this perception” of bias, wrote Loni Reeder.

“I have more Republican/Trump nauseating propaganda floating across my page (unwanted propaganda, I might add!) than I do of nominees Clinton and Sanders. It’s MY perception that they simply wanted to find a way to further inflate their pathetic agenda and to get some additional undeserved press.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook shows new ways to chat, stream video

SAN FRANCISCO — Looking for new ways to engage with its audience, Facebook says people who use its Messenger chat service will soon be able to order flowers, shop for shoes and talk with a variety of businesses by sending them direct text messages.

And soon, if you haven’t “chatted” with those businesses on Messenger in a while, they’ll be able to send you a paid message that offers a special deal or encourages you to buy a product you liked before.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook’s annual software conference Tuesday to describe its latest initiatives at a time when some reports indicate people may be sharing less personal information on the social network — either because of privacy concerns or the growing appeal of competing apps.

Analysts say that underscores the importance for Facebook of adding more features to its growing chat services: It needs to keep people engaged — and continue to learn about their interests for advertising purposes.

But Zuckerberg also reiterated Facebook’s goals for connecting people around the world, adding a jab that seemed directed at the likes of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and others who have called for cracking down on immigration and rebuffing refugees.

“As I look around the world, I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward,” Zuckerberg said at one point during a keynote speech that mostly focused on new software initiatives. “I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others.’ I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases even for cutting access to the Internet.”

Zuckerberg went on to say he prefers optimism over fear and believes technology should be used “to build bridges” instead of walls. The billionaire tech mogul has previously backed efforts to ease US immigration restrictions and provide more Internet access in developing countries.

Most of Zuckerberg’s talk, meanwhile, was focused on new ways that people can use chat services, live video and even virtual reality technology to communicate.

With its new emphasis on chatting with businesses, Facebook is joining several tech companies working to promote the use of intelligent software programs known as “chatbots,” which let businesses interact with customers in conversational language. Microsoft recently announced a similar effort with its Skype service, but Facebook appears further along.

Facebook already has more than 30 companies signed up to deploy chatbots on Messenger, including major corporations like CNN, eBay, Burger King and Bank of America. Facebook is also releasing programming tools that other companies can use to build their own chatbots for Messenger.

“We think you should just be able to message a business the same way that you message a friend,” Zuckerberg said, noting many people hate the experience of calling businesses on the phone.

Facebook is also making it easier for individuals to contact businesses by searching for their bots within Messenger or clicking on an ad in Facebook’s regular news stream. But Vice President David Marcus said the company wants to be careful not to annoy users by filling the Messenger app with unsolicited spam.

Facebook is testing a program that charges businesses for the opportunity to send a “sponsored message,” but they’ll only be able to contact people who are existing customers or have already messaged the business, Marcus said. Individuals on Messenger will be able to block future messages from a business at any time.

That’s consistent with the conservative approach Facebook has used to gradually introduce paid video ads on its main platform and commercials on its Instagram photo-sharing service. The company doesn’t want to risk driving people away with too many annoying ads, Marcus said.

“It’s a very high-quality, personal environment,” he said in an interview. “We want to keep it that way.”

The effort comes as more people are embracing the Internet chat service and its competitors. Messenger now has 900 million active users worldwide, while WhatsApp, another chat service owned by Facebook, claims 1 billion.

“More and more of our mobile time is spent within messaging,” said Ken Sena, an investment analyst at Evercore ISI, who examined the apps in a recent report. He’s one of several analysts who say they believe consumers would prefer talking to a business within the messaging app they’re already using, rather than download a separate app and create another user name and password for each business.

That’s already a popular model in some Asian countries, where people use China’s WeChat, Japan’s Line and other texting services to schedule doctor’s appointments, pay for meals, order merchandise or send gifts to their friends.

Facebook Inc. is also releasing a host of other tools for developers to build apps that work with its services, including software for streaming video from drones and other gadgets. The new video push is part of Facebook’s effort to compete against Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube and other rivals that are also vying to serve video-hungry viewers.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook’s Zuckerberg at crossroads in connecting the globe

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to boast that his 3-year-old effort to bring the developing world online has reached millions of people in some of the world’s poorest nations.

But a central element of his Internet.org campaign was controversial even before it was shut down in a key market this month. Indian regulators banned one of the pillars of the campaign, a service known as Free Basics, because it provided access only to certain pre-approved services — including Facebook — rather than the full Internet.

That leaves the social media mogul at a crossroads. Though he has vowed not to give up, Zuckerberg hasn’t said whether he’ll alter his approach. Facebook declined to make executives available for comment. Zuckerberg could shed light on his plans when he speaks Monday at Mobile World Congress, an annual industry event in Barcelona, Spain, where he has touted Internet.org in previous years.

“Everyone in the world should have access to the Internet,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook this month, arguing that online connections can improve lives and fuel economic development.

To achieve that goal, Zuckerberg has high-flying dreams for someday providing Internet connections through a network of drones, satellites and lasers. But his near-term plan is simpler: Facebook works with wireless carriers in poorer nations to let people use streamlined versions of Facebook and certain other online services, without paying data charges.


While the drones may someday connect people in areas too remote for cables or cell towers, Free Basics is intended for people who live in areas with Internet service but still can’t afford it.

A low-income resident of urban Manila, for example, can use Free Basics to view thePhilippines‘ GMA News site. “He can be informed. He can research. He can read the news,” Ederic Eder of GMA News said.

The program varies by country, in offerings and effectiveness.

In South Africa, for instance, Facebook partnered with the third-largest wireless carrier, Cell C. But Johannesburg resident Priscilla de Klerk said she couldn’t get Free Basics to work on her phone.

“Cell C is much cheaper as far as everything else is concerned, but their free Facebook is not a reality,” she said.

Last fall, Facebook announced a major expansion in Africa, where another regional carrier, Bharti Airtel, said it will offer Free Basics in 17 countries.

“They’re getting a lot of traction in Africa,” said Danson Njue, a Kenya-based telecom analyst with the Ovum research firm. Tech rivals Google and Microsoft also have programs to expand Internet access, he noted, but their approaches are content neutral and involve extending networks to underserved areas.

Facebook doesn’t pay wireless companies for the cost of Free Basics. Carriers make money if new users eventually move to a paid data plan. Facebook also says it makes no money, as it doesn’t show ads, though Zuckerberg has conceded it benefits from gaining users in the long run.

While the company hasn’t released detailed usage figures, Facebook says Free Basics has brought more than 19 million people online for the first time. That counts any user who didn’t have Internet access before, regardless of whether they’re currently active.

On the Internet.org website, mixed in with videos about impoverished students using Free Basics to study and laborers starting small businesses, Facebook boasts more than 1 billion people “have access” to the service. That’s the combined population of regions where it’s available, not the number of users.

Free Basics is now in 36 countries. It was suspended last year in Egypt, on the anniversary of anti-government protests that were organized partly on Facebook. An earlier version of Free Basics, known as Facebook Zero, was shuttered three years ago in Chile, after authorities said Internet providers couldn’t offer discounts for accessing some content but not others.

Similar concerns turned India into the program’s biggest battleground.

Free Basics enrolled more than 1 million Indians in its first year, according to Facebook’s wireless partner, Reliance Communications. But critics, including many in the country’s growing tech community, complained it was a predatory scheme: If low-income users couldn’t afford anything besides Free Basics, opponents said, that meant Facebook was deciding which online services the nation’s poor could use.

“The government should not allow big players to monopolize the Internet,” said Manu Sharma, who runs a software development company in New Delhi.

Facebook responded last fall by announcing it would open Free Basics to any app that met its technical requirements for systems with limited capacity. Zuckerberg also changed the program’s name to Free Basics, after critics complained “Internet.org” sounded like a nonprofit, when it’s part of a for-profit company (the overall campaign is still called Internet.org).

But opponents still worry that Facebook could change requirements at any time, force competitors to pay higher rates to get into the program, or even block services that run afoul of powerful politicians.

“The fact that it could decide what apps could be hosted … was a huge problem for me,” said Basit Zaidi, a New Delhi attorney.

As Indian regulators began studying the issue, Facebook drew more resentment with a public-relations blitz that critics called heavy-handed and patronizing. The regulators effectively banned Free Basics after concluding Internet providers shouldn’t be allowed to charge different rates for certain services, because that discriminates against other content.

U.S. regulators have endorsed the concept of “net neutrality,” which says all websites and apps should be treated equally by Internet providers. They’re now studying whether “zero rating” programs, which offer some content for free, should be allowed. Net neutrality supporters are hoping India’s decision will influence other nations.

Facebook has also launched a program that helps Internet providers offer reliable Wi-Fi service in underserved areas at affordable rates and without limits on content. The program’s been limited to tests in a few countries.

The giant tech company could use its resources and clout with carriers to offer a similar wireless service, perhaps at limited speeds or volume, but without any restrictions on content, said Josh Levy of Access Now, a nonprofit that supports net neutrality. Zuckerberg has suggested in the past that such a service would be too expensive and difficult to offer.

Some Indians, meanwhile, say their country could have benefited from Free Basics.

“Ultimately, something is better than nothing, even if that something is flawed,” said Uday Singh Tomar, a software engineer in New Delhi. “If a person is hungry and getting nothing, a free meal is good enough.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook celebrating its users’ friendships for its birthday

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is giving friendship collages to its 1.6 billion users in celebration of the social network’s 12th birthday.

The collages will be packaged in video presentations of photos of friends and family that have been previously been posted on Facebook. The photos are picked out by automated technology, although each Facebook user will be able to delete some and select other pictures instead.

The videos won’t be seen by anyone else unless a user decides to share the presentation.

Most Facebook users should start seeing the videos at the top of their Facebook feeds by noon Thursday, which the Menlo Park, California, company is hailing as “Friends Day.” It coincides with the 12th anniversary of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg starting the social network in his Harvard University dorm room.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Facebook founder calls for universal Internet to help cure global ills

UNITED NATIONS - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a host of celebrities kicked off a campaign on Saturday to make Internet access universal, saying this was critical to fulfilling the United Nations' newly adopted agenda to combat global ills.

Calling for efforts to ensure Internet access for everyone globally by 2020, Zuckerberg said Internet connections are a dynamic tool for sharing knowledge, creating opportunities, lifting communities out of poverty and promoting peace.

"A 'like' or a post won't stop a tank or a bullet, but when people are connected, we have a chance to build a common global community with a shared understanding," Zuckerberg told at a private luncheon with business leaders at the United Nations.

"That's a powerful force."

The 193 UN member nations on Friday formally adopted a sweeping set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, that aim to end poverty and combat inequality and climate change over the next 15 years and call for shared peace and prosperity.

The objectives, described as "a to-do list for people and planet" by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are intended as a roadmap to be implemented by government and the private sector.

The connectivity campaign calls on governments, businesses and innovators to bring the Internet to the some 4 billion people who now do not have access, organizers said.

Signing on to the connectivity campaign were U2 star Bono, co-founder of One, a group that fights extreme poverty; actress Charlize Theron, founder of Africa Outreach Project; philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates; British entrepreneur Richard Branson; Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington; Colombian singer Shakira, actor and activist George Takei and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. — Reuters

Mark Zuckerberg on the future of journalism and Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a Townhall Q&A this morning, where he spent an hour answering questions that Facebook users left him in the comments.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis asked about Facebook’s role in news and journalism, while Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, asked what Zuckerberg how he imagined the evolution of online publication.

Zuckerberg discussed Facebook’s Instant Articles, (http://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/) a way for publishers to display their content within Facebook and aiming to cut down the load time before users can access the information.

“[I]f you tap on a news link, since that content isn't stored on Facebook and you have to download it from elsewhere, it can take 10+ seconds to load. People don't want to wait that long, so a lot of people abandon news before it has loaded or just don't even bother tapping on things in the first place, even if they wanted to read them,” Zuckerberg said.

According to him, more traditional models of journalism have a hard time keeping up with fast-paced events. But while smaller, faster news bites are useful, they still can’t replace “the longer and more researched work.”

About online publication, he said, “I think there will be a couple of trends towards richness and speed/frequency,” pointing out that more and videos are being uploaded in addition to text and photos.

“This will continue into the future and we'll see more immersive content like VR. For now though, making sure news organizations are delivering increasingly rich content is important and it's what people want.”

Not all the questions were serious, however. Stephen Hawking asked about a unified theory of gravity and other forces, while Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Zuckerberg about his daily workout regimen and whether or not the machines will win, supposedly referring to his Terminator franchise. — TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com